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The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards.
Why? The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.
Read on ... for more about the buy back program.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.
“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.
Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.
“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.
Takeuchi said just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."
A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.
Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.
Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.
The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.
First off, all e-bikes must have pedals. California has adopted a three-tier classification system for e-bikes:
Source: Go Safely California.
E-motorcycles are designed primarily for off-highway use and require a driver’s license.
For more information, check out Go Safely California, a joint effort of CalTrans and the state Office of Traffic Safety.
The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.
People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.
The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.
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People in polyamorous relationships can soon register as domestic partners in the city of West Hollywood under a new ordinance passed this week.
What’s new: The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for polyamarous people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood, as well as some tenant protections. People outside the city can also register.
Why it matters: “It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Councilmember. She said polyamarous families “continue to be stigmatized and really even demonized in this country and so deeply misunderstood.”
Past history: The city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples in 1985.
The city of West Hollywood has approved an ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry for people in polyamorous relationships.
The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood and some tenant protections. The registry doesn’t replace the state’s marriage or the state’s domestic partnership laws.
“It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Council member. “I think that's a real joy that we can bring to people — that they can live in a greater sense of being seen and understood.”
In 1985, the city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples. Similar to that registry, people outside the city can also register.
“This new law not only gives polyamorous unions legal recognition, it also gives people permission to imagine a future together and to plan their lives openly,” said Christina Fialho, president and founder of Rewrite the BiLine, an advocacy group for bisexual people and nonnuclear families, who advocated for the ordinance.
Several cities in Massachusetts have also passed multipartner domestic partnership laws.
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Among the sweeping victories by Democrats on Tuesday were wins in several congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn explicitly to boost their party ahead of the midterms.
The backstory: Republicans were bracing for some losses this election cycle, so last year President Donald Trump urged his party to take the extraordinary step of engaging in mid-decade redistricting efforts. As of Tuesday night, many of those efforts had failed.
What happened: Republicans redrew their maps with the expectation that the coalition of voters Trump won over in 2024 would support them this cycle. In Texas, Republicans were banking on gains made with Latino voters in new maps. But many of those voters shifted their support to Democrats this year.
Among the sweeping victories by Democrats on Tuesday were wins in several congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn explicitly to boost their party ahead of the midterms.
Republicans were bracing for some losses this election cycle, so last year President Donald Trump urged his party to take the extraordinary step of engaging in mid-decade redistricting efforts.
As of Tuesday night, many of those efforts had failed.
That included in Florida, where multiple Democrats — Kathy Castor, Pia Dandiya and Jared Moskowitz — won in redrawn districts, according to race calls by the Associated Press.
In North Carolina, Democratic Rep. Don Davis held on to his 1st District seat, even though Republicans in the state redrew it to be more competitive for the GOP. Trump would have won the redrawn 1st by nearly 12 percentage points, according to the Downballot.
Trump would have won by even more in Alabama's redrawn 2nd Congressional District, which Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures held on to, according to the AP race call.
Republicans in Alabama redid the state's congressional map after the U.S. Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act earlier this year.
And in Texas, which was the first state to redistrict at Trump's urging, a few of the redrawn districts had gone to Democrats.
Republicans redrew their maps with the expectation that the coalition of voters Trump won over in 2024 would support them this cycle. In Texas, Republicans were banking on gains made with Latino voters in new maps.
But many of those voters shifted their support to Democrats this year.
Copyright 2026 NPR
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Nationwide election results came at a relentless pace Tuesday night, each more of a Democratic upset than the next. But you may not have known if you were attending the California Republican Party's election night in Garden Grove.
The scene: In the dimly lit Hyatt ballroom where gubernatorial longshot Steve Hilton and his supporters gathered, the news channels were off, the music was turned up and “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted throughout.
What happened: Minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Associated Press called the governor’s race for Democratic favorite Xavier Becerra.
Read on...for more on the scene before Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton conceded Tuesday night.
Nationwide election results came at a relentless pace Tuesday night, each more of a Democratic upset than the last. But you may not have known if you were attending the California Republican Party's election night event in Garden Grove.
In the dimly lit Hyatt ballroom where gubernatorial longshot Steve Hilton and his supporters gathered, the news channels were off, the music was turned up and “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted throughout.
Minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Associated Press called the governor’s race for Democratic favorite Xavier Becerra.
Around the room, the occasional person glanced at their phone to sneak a peek at the growing GOP carnage. More of the crowd instead looked at each other or toward the empty stage, where a lectern stood in front of a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.
Not long after, Hilton took the stage to concede the race — which had always been heavily favored against him in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.
“Maybe this isn’t the best year to be running for office as a Republican,” Hilton told his supporters, alluding to the election results that would soon lead the Democratic Party to win so big in the House and the Senate that many dubbed it a blue tsunami. “We see what’s going on around the country.”
Hilton knew the odds were long. He’d tried a number of tactics to win over California, including a suggestive advertisement suggesting voters should “Just Try” voting for him. He’d done his best to separate himself from President Donald Trump, who backed his campaign. He also attacked Becerra for staying largely out of the limelight since making it out on top of a chaotic primary.
None of Hilton’s appeals made a significant mark on the result, which trailed at around 36% of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.
Standing outside the ballroom, Matt Shupe, a spokesperson for the California GOP, conceded it was challenging terrain for Republicans this year across the country — and always in California.
“It’s pretty typical that the party that's not in power gains some seats, so I think that was pretty expected for the most part,” he said. “We'll plan on bringing the fight more intensely than ever in 2028.”
By 9:30 p.m., people were headed to their cars to go home.
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The Los Angeles County Superior Court will soon allow people involved in family law, probate and some civil cases to request audio recordings of hearings if no court reporter was present — and they couldn't afford to pay for a private one.
Why it matters: In the criminal courts, all juvenile and felony cases in California are required to have a court reporter. Cases involving misdemeanors and infractions can use electronic recordings. In civil, family law and probate cases, court reporters aren't mandated. Hiring a private court reporter can cost up to $3,300 per day, according to the Superior Court.
Appealing a court ruling is significantly harder without an official record of the hearing. In a 2018 ruling, California's Supreme Court recognized that not having a record of a hearing "will frequently be fatal" to the appeal.
The backstory: The new policy goes into effect Thursday. It comes in response to a California Supreme Court decision from August that the trial courts have a duty to provide litigants who can't pay for court reporters access to word-for-word recordings of proceedings in all civil cases.
The Superior Court in L.A. County, and others across the state, have pointed to an ongoing, years-long shortage of court reporters. They say that since the start of 2023, more than 830,000 hearings in civil court, family law and probate had no word-for-word record.
What court reporters think: The L.A. County Court Reporters Association disputes that there is a shortage, saying the data analysis the courts have relied on is flawed. The association called the state Supreme Court opinion a "devastating blow" to low-income litigants. It also said electronic recordings can be less accurate than what a certified court reporter would produce, which could "put justice at risk for thousands of Californians."
How to request a recording: Here's how to apply. Bear with us; it's not just click, fill out, and file:
